


A Crown of Green Leaves

by Eidolon_writes (kenaz)



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Paganism, Wild Hunt, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4376057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenaz/pseuds/Eidolon_writes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unexpected visitor arrives in Eryn Galen at Midwinter with more than just foul weather following on his heels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IgnobleBard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IgnobleBard/gifts).



> Written for Ignoblebard for the 2012 LOTR Secret Santa exchange.

“Only a foolish man would be abroad today.”  
  
Edraith’s eyes narrowed to a gimlet squint and made a slow survey of the sky above and the frost-bound field below.  
  
“Or a desperate one,” Legolas suggested, training on the dim shape traversing the waste.  
  
“This will be a blizzard before the day is out, my lord, and no mistake.” Edraith’s tone was as much a warning as his words. “If we withdraw now, even the men on foot will make the hunting lodge before the worst of it arrives.”  
  
The stranger persevered across the strath, the grey gash of the Anduin rippling behind him. He had appeared in the morning beneath a sullen sky with the wind already whipping at his heels. A premonition lit briefly on Legolas’ chest before fluttering in the pit of his stomach, a bone-deep sense of recognition bidding him against all good sense to hold. “And what of him?”  
  
“Fools and desperate men are not my province; mine is your father’s men. And you, my lord.”  
  
Legolas frowned. “Not often have I known you to leave the Forest Gate undefended.”  
  
He meant to stall; Edraith no doubt knew it, and would not be so easily put off. He cast a damning glare at the hazy sun. “If the storm is as bad as the sky portends, the only things getting through it won’t be held off by a few bows and spears.”  
  
The pronouncement carried the dark finality of a promise; the shiver burgeoning at the nape of Legolas’ neck had little to do with the chill. “Very well. Take the men on ahead.” He brushed his hand across the butt of his knife, the polished bone and whetted blade a solid assurance at his hip. His bow could be strung and drawn in a trice, and his aim rarely failed. “I will stay.”  
  
“And will you tell your father his captain relieved the western guard and left his son with an interloper,” Edraith asked, a sardonic expression bending his features, “or will I?”  
  
In the end, though, he begrudgingly retained his two finest shots and a mount for each, and sent the rest on to shelter, the wind gusting more relentlessly with each passing hour.  
  
The snow came in earnest at midday. It fell inch over inch, laying new rime over old. The dogged man on the bleak and seamless landscape became a point on which Legolas could fix his bearings when the wind churned up snow enough to render earth indistinguishable from sky. The river soon vanished behind a fumy veil. The man’s form faded intermittently behind curtains of white, materializing each time slightly closer than before. Not once as the day wore on and the weather worsened did he stop or tarry, though the deepening drifts hindered his strides— strides that appeared unevenly labored—and for that display of obduracy, if nothing else, Legolas waited.  
  
The waiting was tedious: the wind howled, mutinous and shrill, through barren branches; it whipped his cheeks with pellets of ice. The damp seeped through every layer, sinking through skin and taking root in his bones. Flakes gathered on his shoulders and settled into the creases of his cloak; he shook it off, only to have it return in an instant. The horses gave their rumps to the wind and hunkered together while white swaths spread across their backs.  
  
The weak sun failed early, hounded into submission by growling clouds as the traveler drew near. The hitch in his gait had grown pronounced. His cloak was well-made yet careworn, his face concealed within its deep hood. A white pelt hung over his shoulders, pinioned by the strap of his quiver— a plain brown piece revealing nothing of its bearer or his origins. The ragged skin gave him a feral aspect, as did the bandage girdling his thigh tinted the color of rust by old blood. The form of a sword was visible under the cloak, but the man kept his gloved hands conspicuously in sight. He came within arrow’s flight of the eaves and then stopped: either he had ears sharp enough to discern the groan of bowstrings through the whistle of the wind— an Elf, then— or he simply had the sense to await admittance before venturing into the wood uninvited. One of the Dúnedain, perhaps. Snowflakes spiralled on the updrafts and danced around his wiry frame, the lightness of their flight a taunt to the beleaguered rising and falling of his chest. Whatever and whoever he was, he was exhausted.  
  
“Who goes there?” The sharp report of Edraith’s command carried over the distance. “Show yourself.”  
  
The stranger pushed back his hood, revealing a shock of pale hair and cervine features. Legolas drew in a sharp breath.  
  
“Stand down!” Edraith barked. Bows lowered; the forest returned to stasis. “You are on the wrong side of the river, Galadhel.”  
  
Legolas could not quite make out the muffled retort.  
  
“Let’s go, lads,” Edraith summoned his marksmen and grinned with half his mouth. “This one has no need of our welcome, and he’s brought a storm to chase his tail.”  
  
And so it was that Haldir of Lorien, rawboned and weary, limped through the Forest Gate just before the turning of the year.  
  
The storm was the least of what he brought with him.  
  
  
  


* * * *

  
  
  
“You are hurt.”  
  
As a greeting, Legolas considered, it left much to be desired.  
  
“I did not come by this”— Haldir’s hand brushed a leg of the pelt — “by happenstance.”  
  
“You’ll ride pillion, then.” As an order, this, too, left much to be desired. “We are withdrawing to my father’s lodge before the blizzard hems us in.”  
  
“I’m hardly in a position to refuse,” Haldir muttered, but the sag in his shoulders when his fate was pronounced spoke more loudly and less wry: relief. He settled in behind Legolas not with his accustomed grace, but with deliberation and care. Only in the arm slung casually around Legolas’ waist for balance, the thumb hitching in Legolas’ belt, could Legolas recognize any vestige of familiarity or ease.  
  
“Where is your horse?” Legolas asked after Edraith and his men had gone out of earshot. “You could not have started out this journey on foot...?”  
  
“Gone,” Haldir replied tersely.  
  
“You are lucky you reached us when you did.”  
  
“Yes,” Haldir answered. That, and nothing more.  
  
The dull thump of hoofbeats grew louder on the well-packed path. “So, what news, sojourner?” Edraith dropped back and reined up his beside them, white breath venting from his horse’s nostrils. “This is not the time for northerly ventures. A needless risk; I’d thought you wiser.”  
  
“Nothing good,” Haldir replied after a pause. “Yet nothing that will not keep ‘til morning. Forgive me, Edraith, but I’ve not the heart to speak of it now. You’ll have it from me when I give it to your lord and his boy.”  
  
Legolas felt only the echo of gall from a jibe holding only the echo of Haldir’s usual humor.  
  
Edraith studied him, then said only, “Very well.” He nudged his horse on and drew the last straggling men up with him, snapping the occasional order to move on and heed the pace until the column had passed out of sight.  
  
Few could refuse Edraith an answer and have his refusal go unchallenged; Haldir was one. Young by Edraith’s reckoning— though nearly everyone was young by Edraith’s reckoning, who had been a seasoned man standing at the side of Aran Oropher— Haldir had earned his regard in no small part because he was not inclined to take what Edraith considered 'needless risks.’ The captain’s opprobrium must have stung.  
  
The thunder became a low and loury rumble, lightning flashing in the brume. Haldir retreated into his hood and was silent. Legolas pressed on until the dense heart of the forest enveloped them, and the clustering pines defrayed the worst of the wind. As the miles passed, Haldir leaned against him more heavily. The encircling arm grew slack. Even then, it was a long time before he surrendered to his weariness and let his head rest on Legolas’ shoulder to sleep. Even in sleep his guard never fully fell; he jerked awake so sharply when Legolas halted at the lodge that Legolas himself startled. He dismounted swiftly, wincing when his feet hit the ground. Cold air rushed across Legolas’ back where Haldir’s body had warmed it.  
  
Within the lodge, the din of happy chatter rose with the chimney smoke. Reprieve from the day’s routine had enlivened the men despite their long march: the blaze in the hearth threw heat across the rushes, and hungry fellows had already raided the stores for cheese and dried meats, tucking in at the long table, tankards of small-ale rattling amiably against the worn wood. Well and good, Legolas thought. Midwinter’s Eve would soon be upon them, and though the forest had darkened, the men’s spirits yearned towards light.  
  
But Haldir carried his burden with him even once he had set his pack aside. He kept at a distance from the others and stared ahead blankly, as if neither food nor fire could reach him.  
  
_What did you see, my friend?_  Legolas wondered.  _What trials befell you on the road alone?_  
  
“Follow me.” He tugged at Haldir’s elbow and led him away. “My father’s rooms are more fit for sleeping.” The habits of solitude and wariness would not be broken in an evening. At least, not in this evening.  
  
Haldir shivered, caught up in a draught only he could feel. He gave Legolas a wan smile. “You are a gracious host.”  
  
Edraith, as skilled as any among them in the tending of wounds, washed and debrided Haldir’s thigh with the same ruthless efficiency with which he attacked every task in his purview. “You are fortunate. It could have gone much worse for you.”  
  
Haldir suffered Edraith’s ministrations with bared teeth. “Worse than this?” he hissed. His fist twisted in the bedding. A fine sheen of sweat glinted on his brow.  
  
The wolf’s bite had left a constellation of raw, red craters in a mottled bruise. The pelt, discarded when Haldir had cast off his cloak, crouched at the foot of the bed as if readying to pounce again. “You will have quite a scar,” Legolas told him.  
  
“I have...many scars,” Haldir bit out, the dismissive roll of his shoulders at odds with his faint and halting voice.  
  
“Many scars, many stories,” Edraith muttered. He held out a mug. “Warm ale. Drink it.”  
  
Haldir, well beyond arguing, drained the mug in three swallows. Edraith pressed a wrist to his forehead, gave a satisfied grunt, and then withdrew. Haldir sank down against the bed, drawing a trembling fist across his mouth. The last vestiges of color had fled his face, leaving the dark circles to carve hollows beneath his eyes.  
  
“You must be famished.”  
  
“Quite.” The word was little more than a rasp.  
  
When Legolas returned a few minutes later with a plate, Haldir was dead asleep, an arm thrown across his forehead. He had managed to draw his trousers up, but not to remove his wet boots. Legolas slipped them off carefully and set them near the hearth to dry. He left the plate, but cleared away the empty mug. Dark dregs formed a sickle shape around the bottom. Warm ale, indeed. Legolas covered him with an eiderdown, snuffed out the candle, and let him be.  
  
  


 

* * * *

 

  
  
  
“More has gone to blight since last I came.”  
  
A night’s sleep in a warm bed and Edraith’s draught had chased some of the shadows from Haldir’s eyes, but his his humor had little improved. He had delivered his brusque assessment to Legolas as they passed the charred ruins of a spider’s den some miles from his father’s halls. Fire had at last sufficed to destroy it, but snow refused to cover it.  
  
The dour appraisal hurt. “Many things remain fair and untroubled here,” Legolas protested. “Look.”  
  
The outskirts of a settlement along a stream could be made out through a crowded stand of birches. Every homestead wore tokens of the season: swags of holly dangling from the eaves of every roof, evergreens festooned with ribbons and hung with suet-cakes to make fat the wrens and sparrows. At dusk, lanterns would cast merry beams in the branches, and icicles would sparkle in crystalline reply. Who would not be moved by the colonnade of beeches towering in steadfast ranks outside his father’s halls? The great gates swung wide as they rode up, a grand and welcoming flourish. This was not fabled Doriath with a Maia’s girdle to guard it, but it was home. With that came a feeling of peace and inviolable security, however illusory Legolas knew it to be.  
  
Edraith had preceded them them into the great hall and stood beside Thranduil’s chair of carven wood. Flames crackled in a hearth tall enough for a man and danced in cleverly-wrought torches jutting from the stone pillars.  
  
“Welcome, Haldir.” His father sat straight and proud on the dais. “Your coming here is unexpected.”  
  
“Aran Thranduil.” Haldir sketched a swift and awkward bow. “I am grateful for the succor of Eryn Galen.”  
  
Thranduil eyed him sidelong, appraising him in silence for a long moment before speaking. “Edraith tells me you barely escaped the storm. I would hear what news you have from abroad, yet I wonder one as well-traveled as you ventures alone in the north in these times: there are many snares about for the unwary or the unwise.”  
  
Had Legolas not been watching closely, he might not have noticed the clench of Haldir’s gut, the words like a fist to tender flesh.  
  
Tread lightly, Father, he appealed in silence.  
  
“I did not start out alone.” The words were clipped, the tone a shade too sharp. But Haldir stood to Thranduil’s challenging look without apology. Deeds had ever been a tongue more suited to Haldir than words; they allowed him grace where words sometimes did not. “I departed Lorien at my lord’s behest. News came from Imladris that two healers had vanished while returning from a settlement of the Dúnedain—”  
  
“—Imladris’ healers are Imladris’ concern,” Thranduil interjected, recompense for Haldir’s impertinence.  
  
Haldir’s nostrils flared when he drew breath. “One of the missing was Lorien-born and apprenticed to the Healer’s Guild in Imladris. Winter has brought famine to the north. Famine, and a great plague upon the Men of Eriador. Not even the Dúnedain have been spared. Only Imladris remembered the ancient remedies, thus Imladris sent those with the knowledge to give aid. Not all of them returned. Elrond sent searchers far and wide, his own sons among them. And yet—nothing.”  
  
Thranduil frowned. “Where comes your part in this?”  
  
“The healer from Lorien was espoused to a scholar in service to my lord. Mallos, he was called.” Haldir’s voice strained at the name. “He was beset with worry and sued for leave to go in search of her. My lord believed him unsuited to the trip, and too distraught beside. My duties were light; I volunteered to serve as his escort and his protector.”  
  
“And you found more than you bargained for.”  
  
From the gravity in his tone, Legolas reckoned Edraith had uttered similar statements far more often than he might have wished.  
  
Haldir’s eyes fell to the flagstones. He blinked rapidly, as if to dispel a thousand vicious visions. “Yes,” he said. “I did.”  
  
What came next was an account of horrific violence, the tale of a winter which had brought cruelties far, far worse than snow and sickness.  
  
“The entire settlement?” Edraith looked at Haldir in disbelief.  
  
“All of them, to a man,” Haldir confirmed. “And to a woman. And to a child,” he added softly. “Slaughtered with such monstrous—” He shook his head, letting his silence travel where his tongue balked.  
  
“And your missing healers?” Thranduil asked.  
  
“We found them, too. Near the Ettenmoors.” A haunted expression suggested the missing had fared no better than the dead.  
  
Edraith cursed under his breath and Thranduil pressed his fist to his mouth. Legolas said nothing; nothing could be adequate in the face of such brutality. The malign powers emanating from Dol Guldur forced Eryn Galen to keep its eyes and ears focused on the black tower; how easy it was to forget that the reach of evil extended well beyond their borders. How easy it was to imagine the Hidden Valley and the Golden Wood immune from the tribulations of Mirkwood.  
  
“Mallos went mad with anguish.” Haldir looked from Thranduil to Edraith, and from Edraith to Legolas. “He was a scholar; he was not like us. I don’t think he truly knew...”  
  
Thranduil’s slow nod was one of understanding. “A man who lives his life in books may forget that the words on his pages were deeds once, done by living men.”  
  
“And men who live no more,” Erdaith added soberly.  
  
“We found tracks,” Haldir continued. “Mallos insisted we follow them. We did, until we discerned they led toward Mount Gundabad. I told him it was unwise to go further, and the sons of Elrond agreed. The mountains are not safe, they told him. They do not go that way unless they have no other choice, nor without strength of numbers and arms. But vengeance had dimmed Mallos’ eyes to consequence, and grief had dimmed his ears to reason; he vowed to go on alone if we would not go with him. The sons of Elrond turned aside.”  
  
Legolas began to see the path Haldir must have tread. “But you did not.”  
  
“I was his escort, not they. I should have dragged him back to Imladris by force.” He opened his mouth and took one sharp breath, then another. “I knew what dangers lurked and he did not. He did not stand a chance against what awaited him.”  
  
“And what awaited him?” Thranduil asked, though the knowledge showed already in his face. A thousand lightless tunnels and airless caves wound below the rocks at the juncture of the Misty Mountains and the Grey.  
  
“An Orc-hold, of course, and treacherous terrain beside. I barely held on to my own life; I could do nothing to save his. Nor either of the horses.  
  
“The scent of blood brought the wolves.” He gestured toward his injured leg. “They have crossed the frozen rivers and swarmed into the foothills, driven either by hunger or under some malefic charge, I do not know which.”  
  
“Likely both,” Thranduil replied, his steepling his fingers against his lips. “More than once of late we have found wolves in the southern reaches of the wood, as though drawn by a summons from Amon Lanc. It is rumored the Necromancer has given them a taste for two-legged prey. We leave none alive to prove the rumor true.”  
  
“So you came here from Gundabad,” Edraith prompted.  
  
Haldir nodded. “The Orcs and the mountains stood between me and Imladris; too many leagues and the storm stood between me and Lorien. If the Orcs had not taken me, it would have been wolves. If it hadn’t been wolves, it would have been the cold. And if it hadn’t been the cold...well.” The tale had taken its toll; he was sickly pale even in the kind light of flame. “And now I must wait until snows subside to bear home the news of my failure. It is cruel this knowledge will be so long kept from their families. They will pass the winter in ignorance while I have not even bones to return to them, for whatever solace it might give them.”  
  
“That they remain in ignorance is unfortunate, but cannot be helped.” Thranduil’s shoulders rose and fell equanimously, the response, Legolas knew, of one whose own losses had inured and annealed him until he took every new loss with philosophical insouciance. “And while you would carry the weight of your charge’s fate on your shoulders, consider that he was a man grown— in service, as you say, to Celeborn, and thus not without wisdom, if not with skill. If desperation drove him so witless neither you nor the sons of Elrond could dissuade him from an avoidable fate, the fault lies not with you.”  
  
Haldir’s expression was unreadable, but Legolas did not imagine he took the slightest comfort in his father’s wisdom.  
  
“You, Haldir, are welcome in my halls for as long as you would linger. Should you have the patience to outlast the winter, I shall send you home on a horse from my own stable— but that may be some time.” He glanced at Haldir obliquely and added, “Eryn Galen has not the luxury of arcane magic against the season’s tides, and I will not endanger a noble beast unnecessarily.”  
  
A muscle in Haldir’s jaw twitched, and Legolas did not think it was only the pain in his leg this time which rendered his bow so stiff. “A most generous offer, Aran Thranduil. You have my thanks.”  
  
“Father, I do not think we will be at table this evening.” Legolas stood, eager to end Haldir’s obvious discomfort. “Haldir is weary and his leg requires rest.”  
  
“Your time is your own, unless Edraith has need of you.” His father lifted a hand in dismissal. “Do not forget we will be cutting crowns three days hence!  
  
“Bring Haldir with you,” he added. An afterthought, as if Haldir did not stand below the dais before him. “It will raise his spirits.”  
  
They had gone only a few paces when Thranduil spoke Haldir’s name.  
  
“I am sorry for your loss. I shall light a candle to speed the souls of Mallos and his wife to the Halls of Waiting. Rest now, and be well.”  
  
His voice had become condoling, and Legolas was glad of it. He knew his father was sometimes slow to acknowledge the sorrows of others, but only because they too keenly recalled his own.  
  
  


 

* * * *

 

  
  
  
“Will it suffice?”  
  
He had chosen the suite because it was near his own and because the song of the stream carried through the stones. He hoped Haldir might take comfort in it. If a taste of those waters could send a body to sleep, perhaps the sound of it could quiet a troubled mind.  
  
“More than.” Haldir moved tentatively from one room to the next, looking from floor to ceiling. “I am accustomed to a great deal less.”  
  
“Yet I have heard the telain of the Galadhil are quite grand.” The realm of his kin in the south was little more to him than a tapestry woven from tales of silver leaves and songs of gold. Without Haldir, it might have remained to him a place only of legend. “I hope to see them for myself someday.”  
  
“My own is small and quite unassuming,” Haldir said. “Though I suppose it homely enough, for what little time I spend in it.” He tested the cushions of a chair near the hearth before settling into it. “It is beautiful, is Lothlorien; I could weep for want of a mallorn tree within my sights. I have been so long abroad, my memory of them is dimmed. My mind has been filled with...lesser sights.”  
  
Legolas closed his hand on Haldir’s shoulder, an indurate ridge of bone palpable beneath clothing and skin. Travels and travails had skived him down to an essential leanness. “Mallos’ death is a terrible thing. But my father has the right of it: it is not yours to carry. Lay this evil where it belongs: at the feet of the Enemy.  
  
"You have been too long among strangers,” he added when Haldir’s silence grew brooding, “and too long in the cold. You have forgotten that many good and beautiful things endure."  
  
"And you would show me such things, I suppose."  
  
"I would.” He squeezed the knotty shoulder, felt Haldir’s flinch of surprise. “Two days time I will give you to rest and nurse your wounds."  
  
"And on the third day?"  
  
"On the third day, my friend, I will show you how we celebrate Midwinter in the Greenwood!"


	2. Chapter 2

The oak grove was the most ancient in the forest. Deep magics hummed in the earth and in the air, and the trees whispered of things that had passed long before the Elves had dwelt there, before the world had been unmade.  
  
Well skyward, clusters of vivid green sprang from bald branches, shocks of bold beauty in the otherwise dormant forest. Thranduil’s folk stood in and beneath each tree where they blossomed, harvesting the vivid sprays and collecting them in festively colored sacks.  
  
Legolas climbed until he reached the crook of two strong branches. “Behold, Haldir!” He snipped a cluster of green and held it up for admiration. “The cutting of the missel-twigs!”  
  
Below him, Haldir said softly and in wonder, “Allheal.” He looked up with the crooked hint of a smile. “In Lorien, we call it allheal, the flower of Nienna. The white drops are her tears, wept to heal Arda marred. Only unmarried women harvest it. They dress all in white and catch up the cuttings in their skirts and dole it out to hang over cradles and doorways.” The smile broadened, a fleeting echo of the smile Legolas remembered from times past. “And when two meet underneath it—"  
  
The branches over Legolas’ head rattled. “—Noldorin rubbish!” Thranduil’s refutation rained down, along with clumps of snow dislodged from the branches.  
  
“Father!” Legolas cast Haldir an apologetic look, but Haldir simply dusted off his shoulders and  
waited for the inevitable elucidation.  
  
“Father, nothing.” Thranduil dropped down to a branch which provided a better vantage for delivering chastisements. “Your lord has allowed his lady to geld the history of his own people.” He waved a green sprig at Haldir. “You don’t know your own roots, lad.”  
  
Haldir’s expression was dubious, but he had either the good sense or good grace to shrug off ancient complaints which had nowt to do with him. “So what say the Wood-elves about allheal, then? Or missel-twigs, if you will.”  
  
Thranduil held court upon the bough, as much a king in the oak as in his great hall of stone. “In Elder Days, when the trees were young, Oromë the Hunter traveled the forests under starlight, routing out the creatures of the dark. He alone of the Valar returned to our lands when all the rest had cloistered themselves away in Valinor.  
  
“On the longest night of the year, when the darkness seemed at its most unassailable, he summoned his great hounds, and those Elves who did not quail at his terrible form and dreadful anger, and rallied them to ride with him, slaying wicked things, harrying them from their dens and driving them out of the forests so the light would return.” He cradled the sprig in his palm and looked at it thoughtfully. “They rode from the setting of the sun to the rising of the new day, and their horses, touched by Oromë’s hand, never tired, nor spooked at shadows, but grew fierce and dauntless as his hounds.”  
  
The singing and laughter which had filled the grove moments before had faded away. The Elves had all stopped to hear the old tale. A few on the ground settled down in the snow to listen, heedless of the cold, their cloaks bundled tight around them, rapt faces fixed on their king.  
  
“The Elves who rode with him grew likewise in strength and valor. Elu Thingol was one such Elf, Beleg Strongbow another. So rode Mablung of the heavy hand.” He pointed the missel-twig toward another tree. “So rode Edraith, greatest of the Greenwood’s guardians! And your lord of the Silver Tree himself, Haldir, and Amdír, who ruled in Lorien long before him.” His gaze rested on Legolas with affection, and Legolas’ heart was filled with both love and admiration. “And so rode Aran Oropher, Legolas, my father and my king.”  
  
“It was a wondrous thing,” Edraith chimed, his arms brimming with sprigs, “to have ridden with those mighty, doughty souls!”  
  
“Oromë loved the forests and all which grew within them,” Thranduil continued. “At his command, the missel-twigs stayed green and hardy even while the snows of winter fell. To each of his riders, Oromë gave a crown of missel-twigs to remind them of those things that cling to fortitude when all else withers or sleeps.”  
  
The story never failed to evoke in Legolas a swell of pride, a tingle of anticipation spiriting along his limbs. This was what it was to be a descendant of the greatest and most wise. Oromë’s hunt was more than an ancient tale, it was his birthright. “To this day, we make our crowns of missel-twigs to bring the blessing of Oromë on our own hunt. To remember the gift of strength he gave to our forebears.” He slipped his knife against another knot of green. “The missel-twig is might in darkness, and the thriving life found even on the coldest, darkest night.” He looked Haldir in the eye and held out the missel-twig as if in offering. “The green brings hope.”  
  
Below him, posed to listen with fists on hips, Haldir cut a figure of a legend returned, some long-lost son of Beleg, a warrior in the cut of old. The low-slung sun had caught the strong planes of his face and cast them in gold. He was as beautiful as winter itself, Legolas thought, and as austere. The sprig slipped his distracted grasp and tumbled errantly from branch to branch.  
  
“Catch it, Haldir!” he cried out. “It mustn’t touch the ground!”  
  
Haldir reached for it only to have it bounce off the bole and change course in flight. He lunged forward on his bad leg, grimacing. He was set off balance and tumbled into the snow. Yet even felled, he held the green spray aloft, looking both amused and chagrined. The Elves who had been watching gave him a good-natured cheer.  
  
“Well, I have caught it for you, at the cost of both my leg and my pride.”  
  
Legolas leapt down and landed lightly at the base of the tree. Snowflakes idly lit on Haldir’s lashes and melted across his cheek, and Legolas stood for a moment simply watching them fall, as if the sunlight glinting off the snow had dazzled him into dumbness. From his place on the ground, Haldir looked curiously back at him. If the breach of manners discomfited him, he did not show it; he continued to hold the missel-twig toward the sun. A challenge lurked in his expression, but it was not a challenge Legolas could decipher.  
  
When, after a protracted moment, Legolas failed to reach for it, Haldir pinched the sprig between his teeth and motioned for Legolas to help him up. Once righted, he didn't relinquish his grip on Legolas’ forearm. Aware of himself very suddenly, Legolas plucked the mistletoe from Haldir’s teeth. A pink tongue flicked out, then retreated behind closed lips.  
  
"And if I had not caught it,” Haldir asked, his voice pitched for Legolas’ ears and no other’s, “what then?"  
  
Legolas found his mind summarily emptied of all thought. He fumbled for his words. "All its power would have gone into the snow and melted away."  
  
"Oh," Haldir said, less a word than a shape of breath. Above them, the trees rang out again with singing and lively chatter, and the air rained a steady storm of green caught in waiting hands by those below.  
  
"You know, before your father maligned my lord and lady,” Haldir went on quietly, his fingers ever-so-slightly tightening on Legolas’ arm, “I had been about to say that in Lorien when two meet beneath the allheal, one may demand a kiss."  
  
Another time, Legolas would have seized the moment and taken what Haldir seemed to offer, but the man had been so dispirited that the sudden turn of levity had caught him off guard, and the moment irrevocably passed. But, no matter: Legolas had set his sights on something more than a kiss stolen in sunlight.  
  
“Hunt with us,” he proposed, returning Haldir’s his clasp. Already he could imagine their ride, their exhilaration. “You venture often on your lord’s errands, but much of this place remains strange to you—this land that is my home, and that I love. As my friend, I would have you know it as I know it. It will be glorious!”  
  
Haldir did not answer, so Legolas pressed again. “Revel with your northern kin, Haldir, under the stars like the Elves of old! Celebrate with us!”  
  
But something closed in Haldir’s face then, a shutter dimming a lantern. He withdrew his hand. Legolas was at a loss to understand how the charged air between them was now only the chill breeze in the grove.  
  
“I shall think on it,” was all he said.  
  
  


 

* * * *

  
  
  
  
He had not refused outright. That, at least, gave Legolas the barest justification for calling on him when the daylight waned and no definitive answer had been forthcoming.  
  
He rapped on the door, but did not wait for a reply before entering. Hadir was sunk deep in the chair with his back to the door, and all Legolas could see of him were his weedy legs stretched toward the fire.  
  
“Is it not custom in the Greenwood to wait for admittance?” Haldir’s voice held a tone of mild amusement. But when he craned his neck around the chair the wry smirk on his lips fell away, replaced by something akin to awe. He rose and turned, brought his hand to his breast and bowed. “My lord.”  
  
Legolas had dressed for the hunt in a deep green velvet surcoat with clasps fashioned in the shape of holly leaves limned in gold, polished bits of garnet serving for the berries. Boots of finely-tooled calfskin fitted up to his thigh and burnished black bracers embossed with the emblem of his house girded his forearms. A verdant wreath of missel-twigs crowned his head.  
  
If entreaties failed to convince Haldir to join him, Legolas was not averse to resorting to baser measures.  
  
“The Long Night is upon us. I cannot in good faith allow you to pass it alone in your room.”  
  
He had fashioned a crown for Haldir and offered it to him now. He had bound the sprigs together with silver thread for the moonlight in Haldir’s hair. His own he had tied with gold, the sun that pursued the moon.  
  
Haldir forestalled the gift with a restraining hand, though Legolas sensed his reluctance, as if uncertain which was more unworthy, to accept the gift or decline it. He had but to turn over his palm and refusal would become acceptance.  
  
Honor, Legolas thought, was a complicated thing.  
  
“It... is enough I am befriended in my need by those who wear it.” Haldir shook his head and drew his hand away. His furling fingers hovered in a loose fist above the greens for a moment before dropping to his side. “I am honored by the offer, but my heart is heavy, Legolas. It does not feel meet to make merry when a man has fallen whom I was sworn to protect. I should not be celebrating when I was remiss in my duty to him.”  
  
“To ride the hunt would be an act of reverence,” Legolas insisted. The desire for Haldir’s presence as they charged the blackness gripped him like a corporeal ache. “It is an act of defiance. It is promise to those who have fallen that you will pursue the darkness tirelessly until it is driven out.”  
  
Assailed by Legolas’ perseverance, Haldir made a small, defensive laugh and tried to look away. “Fairly spoken. You’ve a king’s gift for oration.”  
  
“Truly spoken,” Legolas amended, and would not free him from his gaze.  
  
“You tempt me,” Haldir told him, but it was only an impasse, and a temporary one. He did not take the crown.  
  
“If you do not join us, what will you do?” Legolas asked, discouraged by the silence. But he wished he had held his tongue; in speaking he had freed Haldir from whatever bonds silence had wrought. He had retreated to his place by the hearth, concealing the vulnerable underbelly of his earnestness once more behind a clever countenance.  
  
“Very little, I imagine.” Haldir ensconced himself in the cushions. “This chair is quite comfortable and the fire is warm. I am enjoying my reprieve from ice and whipping winds.”  
  
Seeking to draw him out again, Legolas asked, “is it true winter does not touch Lothlorien?”  
  
Haldir cocked his head, but spoke his answer to the fire. “The snows still come to the outer reaches of the forest, but the heart of the wood is ever mild. The mallorn leaves turn gold and linger until spring, when the green leaves blossom anew.” He smiled the inward smile of memory. “I did not see a true winter until I was nearly grown and traveling far afield with my brothers to hunt. But my father told me stories when I was young of hard winters.”  
  
“The wheel of the year would seem unturned to me without the snow and the fallow time. How do you celebrate Midwinter, if all is ever green?”  
  
“Well,” Haldir’s shoulders rose and fell, “the culling of the allheal, as I have told. We feast on venison and pheasant. We light a great fire and pluck brands to take to our homes to bring light and luck for the coming year. Your father makes us sound a dull and pious lot, but we have our songs and dances.”  
  
“I have heard some of your songs,” Legolas teased.  
  
Haldir did laugh at that, a short, sharp cough. “Trust me when I tell you my dancing is little better,” he returned, but then he was once more subdued. “The marchwardens select their new rangers from amongst all the avid youths at Midwinter.” He motioned for Legolas to sit. “But first the lads must prove themselves by keeping a silent vigil on the longest night of the year. A man who cannot hold his tongue when needs must is a liability, and best to know it before he takes his oath. I remember my first vigil. I thought myself a man.” He sank more deeply into the chair, letting his head loll against the wing and lacing his fingers across his chest. The past stole over him, intangible yet present, like smoke from the fire. “More the fool, I, for I had much to learn of the world. I did not yet understand what I was in for.”  
  
This unbidden tale was a treasure, something rare and precious to be savored; Legolas yearned toward each word.  
  
“We knelt on the cold, hard ground with our swords in our hands, alert for any sign danger—danger we all inwardly hoped would allow us to prove ourselves.” Memory had gentled his mood, and he had shut his eyes. “We were supposed to spend the hours contemplating the Warden’s Oath, but I was thinking chiefly that my back itched, and that my knees ached, and that the sword was really quite heavy.” He chuckled, a low rumble deep in his chest. “You know, the longest night really is quite long when one is young.”  
  
“You may keep your vigil here,” Legolas offered, “if it be your preference.” The thought of Haldir sitting by himself in a dark room seemed unbearably sad. “I can find you a place where you would not be disturbed.”  
  
“Will you throw down some pebbles for me to kneel on as well?” Haldir rolled his head against the back of the chair and smiled a weary smile. “Thank you, but no. I have passed many a night awake in silence and with sword to hand. When it becomes a necessity, it ceases to feel like a great ceremony.” He shut his eyes once more and breathed deeply. “One night is no different from any other.”  
  
“And yet it is.” Legolas rose. It would be nearly dark now and time to go, either with Haldir or without him. “One last time I will beseech you: ride with us. Let grief beget action. Let your losses drive you onward rather than restrain you in grief.  
  
“Ride with us, Haldir,” he implored, an emphatic whisper. “Ride with me.”  
  
But Haldir did not speak. One side of his face was lit in flame, the other cast in shadow, his features graven as strong and smooth as a statue’s. And as unyielding. Vanquished by the intractable silence, Legolas set down the crown and turned toward the door.  
  
“Legolas.”  
  
The sound of his name held him at the threshold. He looked over his shoulder, but did not turn.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Legoas nodded rather too stiffly. “I’ve done nothing save hound you a bit when you least desired it.” He managed a self-deprecating smile. “It is the least friendship requires.”  
  
“—No.” Haldir looked for a moment as though he would say something more, but then he stopped himself and only shook his head. “Thank you,” he repeated.  
  
Legolas shut the door softly behind him as he departed, leaving his palm pressed to the mullion for a long moment after.  
  
  


 

* * * *

  
  
  
  
No fewer than a hundred men and a hundred horses had mustered in the courtyard outside Thranduil’s gate. The bells on their bridles jangled discordantly, a sound both merry and fey. Both the Elves and their mounts had grown restless for waiting, and the seething tide lurched to and fro on the flagstones, bodies buffeting against each other and rebounding. Legolas kept a grip on his reins and stayed toward the edge of the assembly.  
  
He had chosen his best mount, a grey whose lineage stretched to meadows long lost under the brine of Belegear. He kept a wishful eye out for Haldir, but in the churning crowd the presence or absence of any one man was difficult to ascertain. After some searching, he recognized Edraith’s boots, his view of the captain’s body obstructed by the stout barrel of his destrier, but of Haldir there was no sign.  
  
A great murmur of excitement attended his father’s arrival. Thranduil emerged through the gates on a great white horse beneath a constellation of lanterns. His robe was cloth-of-gold trimmed in white fur, his missel-twigs embellished with a garland of adamant and emerald stones. A silver hunting horn chased in gold hung at his hip, and in his fist the sword of Oropher gleamed in lethal promise. Legolas wondered if Oromë himself had looked more grand, or more fearsome.  
  
The Master of the Hunt now present, the company mounted in haste, causing a sudden clangor of hooves and bells. Beside him, Edraith was a vision from a distant age, his dark hair plaited in a severe and ancient style. He clenched the butt of his sword, the winged moon of Elu Thingol still faintly visible on the pommel, worn down by time to a faint whisper on the steel. Yet his crown of missel-twigs sat gaily on his head, and his grey eyes shone with excitement his thinly-drawn mouth would have seemed to disavow.  
  
“Don’t look so crestfallen, boy,” the captain chided. “Look yonder.” Legolas looked where Edraith pointed: a groom was leading a riderless horse to a mounting block. Haldir followed a faltering step behind. He wore the pelt of the wolf, and his brow was wreathed in green and gold.  
  
“I’ll be waiting with your father.” Edraith grinned avuncularly. “Bring him up to the van when he’s gotten himself settled. A fast ride at the fore will do him good.” He thumped Legolas’ thigh. “I speak from experience.”  
  
Legolas barely took note of his departure.  
  
“I thought on your words,” Haldir said contritely upon drawing near. “I have indulged my own wretchedness long enough. You honor many with your ride, my own companions not least of all. I would do my part to honor them.”  
  
He extended his hand, and Legolas took it. “We honor the living as well. Those who stand and fight the good fight.”  
  
“We are the might in darkness,” Haldir intoned, echoing his own words back to him. “We are the thriving life found even on the coldest, darkest night.”  
  
The warmth of his hand traveled up Legolas’ arm and suffused him to his core. “A crown suits you,” he replied. “May Oromë guide your steps this night.”  
  
Haldir accepted the benison with a bowed head. The lantern lights danced on his silvery hair and on the pearly white berries of the missel-twigs.  
  
Thranduil blew a blast on his hunting horn and a great whoop rose from the throng. The horses, startled by the sudden clamor, danced under their riders, tossing their heads and drumming their hooves against the stones.  
  
“Again, Aran Thranduil!” Edraith had come alive with righteous fire. “And make the hills reply!”  
  
At Thranduil’s second peal, the raging host surged forward, leaping across the bridge and the swift river. Not a soul among them had need to lay spur to flank, so eager were the horses to give chase. The forest echoed with thundering hooves and the crash and crack of branches. Thrashing legs shattered the rind of ice and and bounded through drifts chest-high, a spray of powder bursting out in every direction. The frozen marshlands allowed their crossing, the ice neither hindering their speed nor breaking under their weight. Wild-eyed and keen in the dark, they cut a frenzied swath through the woods. The trees seemed to know their business and leaned this way and that to give clear passage. The winds awakened, and the last of the leaves whirled round.  
  
Haldir flew beside him, cheeks ruddy with the cold, pale hair unbound. His crown of green was luminous in the dark. Legolas could hear the rush of his breath, the throb of his heart. His breast was heaving and his eyes were agleam; his arm held high, his lips apart. Their horses moved together as if hitched in traces. Once, Legolas brought them too close and collided with Haldir’s injured leg, but Haldir had given himself over to the ride completely and was now beyond the touch of earthly pain. He seemed not to have even noticed he had been struck.  
  
“Slaves of the Abomination!” Thranduil’s voice thundered above the fray. “Flee to your master and say that we come between Him and the deed of His hand! Cower in your kennels and say that we come between Him and the hope of his treacherous heart!”  
  
A dozen men broke sharply to the left, baying like hounds on the scent. Though the sky was black and the moon but a sickle they had spotted a spider’s lair. The creature, dulled by the cold, fell shrieking to their spears. No man required light to guide his arm in the killing stroke this night; each blow fell true, and fell without mercy. How many wolves’ pelts would cover hearth-floors come morning? How many Orc carcasses would foul the pristine snow when the new year’s sun dispelled the gloaming?  
  
“Aran Oropher!” His father howled in fury.  
  
“Elu Thingol!” Edraith’s voice reverberated behind him in the darkness. “Mablung the Mighty!”  
  
The invocations did not cease: even the longest night did not hold hours enough to name all the unjustly dead.  
  
Legolas heard Haldir shout out beside him for Mallos, and for men whose names he had never heard, the other, unspoken wounds Haldir tended in his long silences.  
  
And into the sacred darkness, Legolas cried his mother’s name, the name reserved by a father for his son’s grief and his son’s vengeance, at once a terrible legacy and a beautiful gift.  
  
A flash in the sky drew his attention to the naked canopy. Above him, passing through the trees like smoke, the silvery shape of a horse and rider coalesced from rising vapor. Jagged antlers forged from starlight burst from a fearsome helm. Golden hooves pawed silently through the air, leaving a trail of sparks struck from nothingness. Legolas turned to bid Haldir look, but Haldir had seen, and continued to see. The light of the stars was in his eyes, mithril-bright, an inextinguishable fire. Legolas knew with uncanny certainty that he and Haldir alone of all the host could see this. Not even his father nor Edraith regarded the stars to see the light guiding their path, the beacon driving the darkness before them. The sight belonged only to them.  
  
The spectral figure lifted his horn to his lips, and the sound filling the forest was victory, righteousness, and hope. Legolas knew little of the high tongue, but he knew well enough the words of the Huntsman’s call:  _Utulië'n aurë! Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva!_  
  
But then the stars subsumed him and he was gone.

 

  
  
  
  
The host sped on and on, without rest, without tiring. The only sounds louder than the tolling of the names were the dying cries of the creatures falling in their wake. Night unfurled around them like a great black shroud, endless and impenetrable, until, quite suddenly, the riders found themselves returned to the very place from which they had departed: before the gates of Thranduil’s halls, amidst the beech trees and the lantern lights. The hunt was over as quickly as it had begun. Only a faint and burgeoning stripe of grey along the eastern horizon confirmed that hours had passed, and not mere moments. Legolas wagered none among them could tell on what strange paths they had galloped, nor how many miles they had gone, even those who knew each root and tree as they knew their own sinews and bones. The horses’ coats shone, but none were sweating, nor winded, nor sore. A preternatural calmness had settled over them; even the most restive among them stood quietly with a hind foot cocked, snuffling at the ground.  
  
In the great hall, a sumptuous feast awaited. Rosemary sprigs perfumed the floor and the roasting boar glistened on its spit. Ruby wine, the best in Thranduil’s cellars, awaited the thirsty in crystal decanters, their facets winking coyly under candlelight. Each sense would be sated at Thranduil’s table, each triumphant hunter would eat and drink and sing his fill.  
  
But Legolas had little appetite. Leastwise, not for boar or wine. His heart and mind still flew through the forest with Haldir and the Huntsman. The hairs on his neck thrummed with animal awareness. He felt a crackling sensation, a stirring in the marrow of his bones, the premonition of lightning before the arrival of the storm. He slowly turned. Haldir’s eyes were fixed on his, drawing him with silent intent. Legolas knew the strange light was still in them, the shared wildness still lingering in their souls.  
  
“Come,” he whispered, and Haldir followed.  
  
  
  
  
He combed Haldir’s hair with his fingers. The wind had tied it with little knots and snarls, a bit of leaf caught here, a little twig snagged there, a touch of the wood deep within the stony halls. Flames danced gold across his skin like the first rays of a renewed sun. Haldir did not stir, though Legolas could not say if his was the stillness of the hunter or of the prey. His eyes, unblinking, never left Legolas’ face.  
  
“Child of the forest, beloved of Oromë,” he said, and Haldir smiled.  
  
“This night I am. We are, both of us.” He traced Legolas’ temple with his fingertips, cupped his cheek. Legolas turned his head, leaning into the touch, kissing Haldir’s palm. “Your eyes...” Haldir continued to look at him in wonder. “You... you are a light in the darkness.”  
  
Legolas traced the line of a fine white scar over Haldir’s sternum and around his ribs, the crooked trail of an old wound. “Many scars,” he said. His touch drifted across a pink, puckered mark near his shoulder. “Many stories.”  
  
Haldir’s eyes closed and he slowly sighed, the sound of a man laying down a long-held burden. “You shall have my stories, Legolas. All of them. But not tonight.....tonight, I would look forward.”  
  
Legolas brushed his lips across Haldir’s jaw, his throat, heard the soft exhalation of his breath. “To the return of the light.”  
  
“Yes.” Haldir opened his eyes. They flashed clear and bright. “To the return of the light.” The weight of years melted away. He looked at last himself again, as Legolas had always seen him in his memories, beautiful and enduring, without the strain of cares and grief. He took Legolas’ face between his hands with and kissed him. Gently, first. And then not gently. Not gently at all.  
  
Legolas’ mind filled with visions of gold and silver and eternal spring.  
  
Later, in a moment of reflection, Legolas brushed his fingertips over the missel-twigs, the crown of green still resting on Haldir’s brow. The white berries glistened like stars, like the sweet tears of Nienna. “Allheal,” he whispered. A green hope.  
  
“Yes,” Haldir answered. That, and nothing more.  
  


 

~ The End ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to canon purists who may point out that in LOTR, Legolas runs on top of the snow. I am ready to suspend my disbelief about many things in the Legendarium, but that does not extend to defiance of the laws of physics. Likewise, though Legolas was apparently unphased by the cold in LOTR, there is precedence in canon (The Silmarillion, Ch. 9, “Of the Flight of the Noldor”) for Elves to “suffer anguish” or even perish from cold. I feel all this justifies a weary, wounded Haldir’s inability to dash lightly over the snow and his fear of potentially freezing to death.
> 
> A few turns of phrase in the hunt sequence are either inspired by or taken verbatim from W. B. Yeats’ The Hosting of the Sidhe, a wonderful poem of the Wild Hunt. Oshun’s character bio of Oromë was also both a help and an inspiration.
> 
>  
> 
> Utulië'n aurë! Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! = "The night is passing! The day has come! Day will come again!"


End file.
